INTERVIEW-EBRD mulls changing strategy due to financial crisis

                                
 By Marja Novak
                                
 LJUBLJANA, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) may change its strategy
due to the global financial crisis and is still debating whether
to remain active in parts of the former Soviet bloc, a bank
official said on Friday.
                                
 "The bank will be addressing ... whether to adjust its
strategy," Francois Lecavalier, EBRD's director for the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, told Reuters.
                                
 Any adjustments could be made public after a board meeting
in December, he said in an interview, but gave no details.
                                
 The EBRD was set up in 1991 to help the former communist
countries of eastern Europe make the transition to market
economies by fostering private sector investment.
                                
 Many of those countries have since built market economies
and the bank has shifted its focus south and east, ushering
Turkey into its operations in October.
                                
 Lecavalier could not say if the bank would extend its
presence in the eastern part of the EU or stick to its earlier
plan to cease investing by the end of 2010 in former communist
states that joined the European Union in 2004.
                                
 These include Slovenia, which is already a member of the
euro currency bloc, and Slovakia which will adopt the euro in
January 2009.
                                
 Lecavalier noted that the EBRD expects to end 2008 with a
loss for the first time in a decade, mainly because the falls on
global bourses reduced the value of EBRD's equity stakes, but it
is determined to keep up its investments.
                                
 "We are going to support existing clients, we are not going
to be retrenching," he said. The global credit crunch has
resulted in companies being more keen on getting financing from
the EBRD, be it in loans or investment in equity.
                                
 The EBRD is ready to help countries in trouble like Hungary,
which has been badly hit by financial crisis, but "we are not a
lender of last resort", Lecavalier said.
                                
 Countries should press on with the sale of state assets,
despite the increased role in the economy that governments in
many Western countries have taken to counter the global crisis.
                                
 "We continue to believe private investors have a tendency to
make better decisions (than governments)," he said.
                                
 He said the bank will continue to focus on supporting
private investment in public infrastructure programmes and
investments in energy efficiency. He also said investment in
banks will continue to be a priority.
                                
 The EBRD's total investment amounted to 5.6 billion euros
($7.10 billion) in 2007 and is expected to remain at about the
same level this year.
 (Reporting by Marja Novak; Editing by Zoran Radosavljevic and
David Stamp)